There are several ways to rank America’s most widely followed public companies. They could be ranked by annual sales, brand value, market capitalization, number of customers, or profits. Another approach is to analyze how often the investing public looks up a corporation’s stock symbol. It is hard to determine this exactly.

First, there has to be a time period. A company such as BP plc (NYSE: BP) was widely followed by investors after the Gulf oil spill. Investor interest has dropped since then. Public corporations that are involved in scandals or legal problems are closely followed for a while. 24/7 Wall St. looked at data which covered a period from three months to one year to average spikes in public interest in a stock.

Another way to determine how often a company’s stock price is looked up is volume. Citigroup trades 550 million shares a day, which makes it the most widely traded public company in America. But, Citi’s shares are only worth $5. Apple trades only 15 million shares a day, but its share price is $340. The corporations that 24/7 Wall St. examined had to have both high share prices and trading volume.

Another piece of data 24/7 Wall St. considered was short interest. It is easier to sell a stock short when the number of shares outstanding and the number of shares traded are large. Short interest in some widely traded companies is more than 100 million shares, which is a sign that the interest in the stock drive both volume and negative short bets against the company’s future value.

Finally, 24/7 Wall St. considered information from several media sources which have stock quote pages. TheStreet.com occasionally posts its most widely looked up stocks. Google has a search feature to show which stocks are widely followed. Stocktwits and other financial social network sites have measurements of those stocks that are most widely followed by their members.

24/7 Wall St. took these data points to create a list of the ten stocks which Americans watch most frequently and follow most closely. Information on short interest, revenue, three-month trading volume, and market capitalization are included.

These are the Ten Public Companies Americans Are Most Interested In:

1. Merck (NYSE: MRK)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 15 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $104.4 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 21.2 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $27.5 Billion

Merck is a product of the merger of its core pharma business with competitor Schering-Plough. The transaction was valued at $41 billion and was similar to one which put Pfizer together with Wyeth at about the same time. The reason for these mergers is that the large drug companies have started to lose patents on their largest selling drugs. Merck is a market proxy for the entire drug R&D and marketing industry worldwide which is the reason it is so closely followed by investors.

2. Apple  (NASDAQ: AAPL)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 19 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $313.1 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 6.8 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $65.2 Billion

Apple is one of the best known companies in the world, and its products are probably the most beloved. Founder Steve Jobs is considered on of the great CEOs of the last century. He took a struggling company and turned it into a consumer electronics, PC, and smartphone powerhouse. It is now the most valuable technology company in the world by market cap. Apple continues to grow at a feverish pace particularly for such a large company. Apple’s revenue jumped 70% in the last quarter to $26.7 billion.

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3. Citigroup (NYSE: C)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 549.8 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $139.6 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 354.6 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $80.3 Billion

Citigroup is the creation of financier Sandy Weill who built a financial supermarket with consumer banking, corporate banking, M&A, mortgage lending, investment banking, and insurance all under one roof. The benefits of having one company that could operate across the entire financial world had at least one great flaw–it was too complex to manage. Arcane mortgage backed securities began to default rapidly, nearly taking Citi and the world credit system down. Citi’s shares will never trade above where they did in 2007. The stock is the most widely traded and shorted company traded on any American exchange–a proxy for the American bank system

4. Ford  (NYSE: F)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 83.7 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $64.9 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 179.5 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $118.3 Billion

Ford was, at least for a while, all that was left of The Big Three after Detroit was nearly destroyed by bloated expenses, high labor costs, competition from abroad and the recession. GM and Chrysler went bankrupt. Ford borrowed enough money to remain a public company. The Ford family also gambled that it could bring in a strong executive from outside the car industry to run the corporation.  CEO Alan Mulally has turned Ford into one of the most successful vehicle manufacturers in the world. GM may be public again, but Ford is Wall St.’s proxy for the US car industry.

5. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 228.1 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $151 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 111.7 Billion Shares
>Annual Sales $150.5 Billion

Bank of America is another large US bank  that was nearly taken under by its bets on the mortgage industry. It extended that gamble with the government-supported buyouts of Washington Mutual and Countrywide. Bank of America was bailed out by the federal government, the management that took the risks on derivatives was thrown out, and the board is largely made up of financial executives approved by the Treasury.

6. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 55.7 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $117.3 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 48.4 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $35.1 Billion

Intel is the largest chip company in the world and investment in the firm is a reasonable way to put money into the global hardware industry. Intel provides processors for equipment as large and expensive as servers, as widely distributed as PCs,and as small as smartphones. Intel has no real competition because of its size. A number of smaller companies including AMD and Nvidia has started to challenge Intel’s dominance in several niche markets like graphics chips.

7. GE (NYSE: GE)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 56.6 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $199.1 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 55.5 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $156.8 Billion

GE is the world’s largest conglomerate and one of the largest corporations of any kind in the world. It holds substantial  global market share in the financial services, energy infrastructure, consumer electronics, medical equipment, jet engine, energy infrastructure, and household appliance businesses. Investors view GE as a proxy for the broader economy. This is true and has made it hard for GE to grow faster than GDP for the last several years.

8. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 57.9 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $243.8 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 85.2 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $62.4 Billion

The world’s largest software, the stock is often owned by investors because of its dominance in the PC, server, and business applications industries. Nearly 90% of all PCs worldwide use the Windows operating system. Microsoft also has systems to run smart phones and mobile media players. Apple and Google have challenged it in these smaller device businesses. Microsoft is also a way for investors to follow the search engine and video game businesses. Microsoft is the No.2 search engine company in the US due to a business combination with Yahoo! and a large video game manufacturer. Its lead product is the Xbox 360.

Also Read: Apple Earnings Shine With or Without Jobs

9. Cisco  (NASDAQ: CSCO)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 22.2 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $117.7 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 41.2 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $40 Billion

Cisco makes the infrastructure that runs the Internet. Its huge routers are the critical traffic managers of the Web. They operate at the core of the infrastructure of almost all large cable and telecom firms. Cisco has become more of a consumer driven business in the last five years. It owns one of the largest TV set-top box operations. It purchased the Linksys WiFi business. Cisco’s primary goal is to use its products to transmit video to run the consumer and business video industries from the point at which they leave the provider to hundreds of millions of PCs or TVs.

10 . Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI)
> Average Volume (3 Month): 54.5 Million Shares
> Market Cap: $6.2 Billion
> Shares Short As Of 12/31/10: 213.1 Million Shares
>Annual Sales: $2.5 Billion

Sirius XM Satellite Radio is what is left of the two companies that created the satellite radio business. The hope of the industry was that it would replace a large portion of the free radio listening audience with people who would pay to have seamless service and scores of channels available anywhere in the US. The company’s products were widely used and Sirius XM became a cult stock, traded heavily because of the extremely low price of its shares and excitement which surrounded the launch and growth of an entirely new category of media and consumer electronics. The presence of Howard Stern helped. The firm has the most shorted stock of any company traded on the NASDAQ.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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